immigration and magnet schools

In the 1960's, the large city near my little neighborhood decided to fix their segregation problem and meet national requirements by starting a Magnet School program.  It was award winning at the time.  The reality of it was less sparkling, though

The High School they decided to turn into the magnet was an all-black school on the north side and it represented the neighborhoods of the northside, which was also segregated.  They did not stop everyone that would go there due to geography from going there, but they halved the people that went from the neighborhood, sent the half that was no longer automatically in that population to small, poor but white schools that weren't that far away or busing them across town to the all-white high schools.  They then upped the curriculum, added college classes, advanced classes, better music, art, science, and math classes and went from 3 sports to the addition of things like tennis, golf etc.  They then had the white students apply to go there based on their strengths.

Soon the school had the best band, chorus, won the academic awards, and those students that were just going there became the losers.  They eventually made all the students apply.  It was and is a better school, but by pulling the talent out of the other schools, a lot of students lost sight of students that excelled and those students that attended the school, that might have been valedictorian at their old school were now just one of the crowd.

Time passed, and the northside, southside, westside, eastside divisions became pockets of poverty and hopelessness with only the magnets and charter schools to provide hope.  The wealthy sent their children to the same prep schools that they had always sent them to.  The upper middle and determined to moved to the suburbs where the schools were best according to test scores and sports opportunities.  Now, instead of racial segregation, we were segregated by money.  The cities schools are in a constant fight to get off the failure to succeed list.  The teachers are threatened if they don't succeed, so the best move out.  The cities attempt to deal with segregation without really fixing the problem has made everything worse.

So now we  (not me personally,  no one asks for my opinion but I seem to have one about everything--read this as the USA and other countries that are experiencing growing pains and blaming it on immigration) are trying to halt the immigration of the wrong people.

We don't want more poor, uneducated, desperate refugees seeking to replace their unsafe homeland with something that won't kill them and we don't want more hopeless, unprepared but aspiring people  that seek the land of opportunity coming over and competing with our own hopeless and unprepared but aspiring children and relatives by working for less money.

What we want, is for the well educated individuals that are willing to do those jobs that we don't have anyone trained to do, those talented individuals that can help us move up in IT or Medicine or Research, to immigrate here and also to work for a little less.  It would be helpful if they looked like what we expect well-educated, intelligent, successful people to look like, but as long as they are willing to assimilate, they are welcome.

People mostly immigrate for three reasons.
1. They are refugees--something, a natural or manmade disaster (war, fire, tsunami, huge earthquake, volcano, coupe, genocide, human trafficking) has taken their home, made it unsafe for themselves or their family, and driven them out.  No one chooses to be a refugee.  No one can safely stay in the country they called home when they are a refugee.
2.  They are hopeless--The country they were born in has shown them that they will never be successful, they are the wrong color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or they have a physical or mental disability or a set of beliefs that place them at risk for starvation, beating, imprisonment, ostracism, and believe that there is another place where they can find hope.
3. Adventurers--those people that see every opportunity as an adventure.  They are risk-takers, shakers and movers, lunatics.  They are also not the most common group immigrating.  These individuals are much more likely to get a visa, or fly in on a kite, then go home when the adventure is over.  This also seems to be the only group the USA really wants to deal with.  "Come on in, spend your money, share your thoughts, leave when you have nothing else to give us."

While Columbus may have been that winning #3 candidate, adventurous and going home when he has what he wants, the rest of us got here via immigrants of the first 2 varieties.  We were trafficked, be were bond servants avoiding imprisonment, we were religious outcasts, tenth children of poor people, hopeless, ostracized, seeing our only future in a new land.  Three hundred years ago, no one was turning anyone away.  One hundred years ago, our nation was starting to squawk if the faces were too brown or the religions too diverse.  These days--we only want the cream.

Why would the cream of the crop of a nation migrate?  For a better country? A better paycheck?  Why?  We are not number one in the USA for most things that make people that already have their choice of places to go and salaries to request  make that choice.

We are attractive to people in places that have no freedoms.  We are attractive to people that see us as accessible on foot and having some chance of living--not dying.  We are attractive to people that have no idea what it is like in real life.  Our TV shows make us look like everyone has money and opportunity.  Our homeless people, our prisoners, our children and women that have been forced into prostitution or into slave labor, they aren't on the TV sitcoms.

And our hate, we do not put that hate on TV.  We do not show that the same thing that made states and cities have to come up with plans to stop segregation, exist.  Our melting pot is full of people that think their way is better, their genes are better, their religion is better, and their brains are better than those people that are not like them.  The people in power whine when the opportunities they were born with are offered to people that have never had those opportunities before.  We are so afraid of competing with people we view as inferior and being proven wrong in our assumption of superiority.  We believe there is a limited amount of resources and opportunities and sharing might mean not having either for ourselves or our loved ones.

Can we become a more secure, less hateful, fearful, acquisitive, greedy,competitive, judgemental nation?

I think I'm counting on it.